Senate Votes to Move Ahead With War Powers Resolution in Rebuke of Trump: 5 Republicans voted to advance the resolution

[Celerity]

https://www.notus.org/senate/war-powers-resolution-vote-venezuela-republicans

The Senate voted 52-47 Thursday to move forward with a War Powers Resolution that would curb President Donald Trump’s ability to expand military actions in Venezuela — the first rebuke yet by Congress of the president’s decision to act without its approval in the nation. Along with Sen. Rand Paul, who co-led the effort with Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Todd Young and Josh Hawley voted to advance the resolution. Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, who was publicly undecided ahead of the vote, was also a “yes.”

The resolution will go for a final vote in the future. The resolution would require the administration to obtain congressional approval before launching any further military hostilities in or against Venezuela. Similar efforts to rein in Trump’s war powers have failed before, including Senate votes in October and November and two House measures in December in response to the president’s fatal strikes on boats of alleged drug traffickers and its seizure of oil tankers.

In November, only Murkowski and Paul voted to limit Trump’s war powers. This vote, however, comes after the administration’s strikes on land in Venezuela to capture and prosecute its leader, Nicolás Maduro. “The previous votes have been more hypothetical. This vote is about a real incursion,” Paul told reporters after the vote. “It’s about a real invasion of a foreign country. … I think the vote today reflects that more Republicans are taking it seriously.”

The vote came hours after Trump told The New York Times he expected U.S. oversight of Venezuela to last “much longer” than a few months, potentially years. “Only time will tell,” Trump told the Times on Wednesday evening. “We will rebuild it in a very profitable way. We’re going to be using oil, and we’re going to be taking oil.”

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